Auxiliary craft on Star Army ships?

[Fred]

How feasible do you guys find the concept of a KFY ship having a shuttle-like craft inbuilt in it's frame rather than completely separate and requiring a landing bay? I know there are already the extension points on the Yui scoutship that allows to attach a shuttle... but what about having a part of a ship actually be another smaller ship?

Not in the way escape pods are - more like the Captain's Yatch on Star Trek vessels like the Galaxy-class, Intrepid-class and Sovereign-class. The craft itself would be roomier, with namely better living facilities than a Fox T4 shuttle and it would also be FTL capable (similar to how a Runabout is to the standard Starfleet shuttlecraft).

 

[Zack]

I refuse to believe the galaxy class has a captain's yatch on it, however it is completely reasonable. The attachment points are pretty much already the exact same thing just without a dedicated ship to go there.

 

[Doshii Jun]

I refuse to believe the galaxy class has a captain's yatch on it, however it is completely reasonable. The attachment points are pretty much already the exact same thing just without a dedicated ship to go there.

Fred -- is the purpose to have the ship protected better by being a part of it? If so, I get it ... if not, Uso's right.

 

[Fred]

Sort of...

Possible uses :

• Enable a vessel to have a craft larger than it's landing bay capacity (and probably tougher than one that would fit in the landing bay, like the T4).
• Allow for a ship to have the usage of a craft with better amenities than the T4 Fox combat aeroshuttle (rooms, kitchen, storage), especially on long voyages or while on a planet.
• When mated to the ship, the integrated craft would have it's systems benefit it's host, such as CDD system, crew quarters, auxiliary sensors and computer systems.
• If the larger ship is compromised, would allow the crew present a quick manner of escape that could be considerably more autonomous than escape pods. It would also save a part of the crippled ship.

 

[DocTomoe]

Two words:

Prometheus Class

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Prometheus_class

 

[Zack]

That is completely different than what we are talking about. 3 ships of the same general class compared to one mother ship and several ships piggybacking.

While what we are talking about has real tactical merit the Prometheus (while cool) really dosen't.

 

[Wes]

I like the idea of auxillary craft.

1) Shuttles come and go; sometimes you have extra, sometimes you're short. It's hard keeping track of which shuttle goes where and belonds to who, so let's avoid the hassle by making them freely exchanged between ships. The aux. craft would be there to stay, though, and could be customized (mainly thinking as in interior setup here).

2) Plot wise, it's good for giving the characters another place to hang out and another way to get to where we want them to go (for example I'm sure some couple will use it was a secret dating/make-out spot).

3) Shuttlebays could be eliminated entirely through the use of docking points.

 

[Fred]

Whoa, Point 3 solves one of my problems with the Kochou, but I see drawbacks about not having shuttlebays : You have no place to load heavy cargo on a ship anymore. Would there be ways to deal with that, you think?

 

[Wes]

Does the ship have a loading ramp to the cargo bay like the Sakura?

 

[Fred]

Well, I was kinda counting on using the landing bays to load the cargo in, and then transfer it to adjacent cargo bays. *shrugs*

 

[Zack]

Consider using a different docking ring for cargo ships or a heavy load elevator shaft that connects between ships like in the old days.

 

[Fred]

That works. I had a different application for the Kochou's elevator shaft (yeah, there was one), but I guess I'll have to rethink around it a bit.

What about the open space power armor bays? Can they be used for shuttles and armors at the same time if need be? I mean, if a ship has to rescue escape pods, it has to let them in somehow, right?

Also, to come back to Wes' question, I was originally sort of aiming on using the shuttlebay as a loading area from where the cargo could be transfered to adjacent holds. Reading over the Nozomi's archives showed that stuff was already being offloaded in shuttlebays, so, msting the two ideas seemed more efficient and supported loading heavier cargo on the ship more easily (I mean, the Nozomi-class' cargo bays are like on the other end of the ship...).